On the road again (carriage roads)

We decided to explore town a little more today while waiting for the weather to cool down a bit. We went to Southwest Harbor to look around, it is a smaller town but has some nice little stores..we stopped to buy some fresh bread at a little bakery, picked up a couple of sandwiches at a little gourmet grocery store, then headed to Bar Harbor. Eldy saw that a cruise ship was coming into the harbor and it was one he had been on when he was in the cruise booking business. It was HUGE in the harbor, I had never seen one up close like that..the weather was incredible in the harbor...very breezy and very very cool. The weather changes constantly temperature wise. One minute it can be quite warm, the next extremely cool depending on what part of town you are walking in. It's wise to always have a light windbreaker or sweater when traveling around the harbor, and if you go out on a boat, you REALLY want something warm and water resistant! we found the cruises to be COLD when far out on the water, and we like cold! For lunch we ate at a 50's style restaurant called Dink's Route 66...really cool antique toys/items stashed in every nook and cranny of the place. Parts of it were from an old church, so there were pretty stained glass windows framing the walls as well. Food was good. We saw a couple of cruise staff ordering lobsters and relishing every bite at the table next to us. I can't quite get used to seeing the whole lobster cooked with the eyes looking at you while you are tearing it apart. Late in the day, we went back to the carriage roads tour book and found the "Ampitheatre Loop", a distance of 5.2 miles in the book, and marked "EASY/FAMILY". Yeah, right! 5.2 mile ride with constant inclines. It's a 200 feet change in elevation, but it seemed like 500 feet to us.The photo you see of the sky and treetops is the view from the top of this ride. We were literally at the top of the tree line. Although we've been riding for about a week almost every day, this was a challenging ride and definitely not "easy" for 60+ year olds. We ended up walking about a half mile total on the inclined roads. I think part of the problem is we don't know how to use all our gears. I think we need some lessons! The Ampitheatre Loop has the longest bridge in the carriage road system, 236 feet long. It was beautiful. Today is our last day at Smuggler's Den. We hope to do a walking hike today, but we'll see. Our bottle of Aleve is getting depleted and we might have to do a little shopping.